Burning speed for master disk...

[Earwitness]

I'm taking 9 songs to my mastering guy tonite. I did a btd to the desktop, .WAV 24bit and then I burned them all from my Mac 24bit multiple mono saved in a file to a CD (sony CD-R), (they just fit) and I burned them at 4X speed. Now since its not 16/44.1 playable audio, would there be any noticable difference if I burned the CD at 1X?
thanks,
sam

[Bob Olhsson]

I generally burn data at the fastest possible speed because that generally gives the lowest error rate. I do red book at slower speeds because it can make the disk easier to read for some CD players. How slow depends on the blanks, if I'm burning from an image and which system I'm using.

[Earwitness]

Oh and is there any real strong argument for bounce to disk multiple mono, or bounce to disk stereo interleaved as to take to the mastering guy? He said he can open both. What is the difference to the stereo image between the two?
thanks
sam

[MASSIVE Master]

I did fairly extensive experimenting concerning speed vs. BLER and found that in almost all cases, there was an "efficiency window" (lowest block error rates, jitter, best focus, etc.) at around 20-25% of a drive's top speed. This over around six popular drives and six popular media, blah, blah, blah...

BTW... If anyone is interested, the best was at 8X on a Plextor Plexwriter using (standard CD-R) Tayio Yuden silver stock. Although Maxell's GOLD MUSIC CD-R had an incredibly low rate - It was insane - Can't remember it, but it was around 0.1/3/0 - Had to check it twice.

[illynoise]

Burn your CD at 8x or slower for CD plants. I've only gotten rejected once and that was burnt at 32x, my oversight.

The most reliable discs that I've come across are from office max and they are called Khypermedia 100 pack. Don't think I'm crazy, but they have the least amount of errors, and I've never been rejected by a plant out of the last 100 or so projects. We have THE Mitsui Gold plant here in Colorado Springs. They aren't as reliable as the Khypermedia's.

Peace out,

BaseJase
Illynoise

[Bob Olhsson]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

... Maxell's GOLD MUSIC CD-R had an incredibly low rate..

I had one batch like that however recent batches have been no better than TY silvers. As max speeds have gone up, quality has gone down although it's still well beyond the level where one would expect problems. I also found 8X to be the best error rate for red book CD-Rs.

[bob katz]

Originally Posted by Bob Olhsson

I had one batch like that however recent batches have been no better than TY silvers. As max speeds have gone up, quality has gone down although it's still well beyond the level where one would expect problems. I also found 8X to be the best error rate for red book CD-Rs.

True enough. But with my Plextor writer(s) and TY silvers, I've gotten EXCELLENT error rates at as low as 1X speed, and they're not even officially rated for 1X anymore. Thank goodness. Even at 1X with Taiyo silvers, I'm often getting average C1 rates of less than 1 and peak one second rates of less than 25, often less than 10.

At 8X it's "even better".

BK

[Greg Heimbecker]

Originally Posted by illynoise

We have THE Mitsui Gold plant here in Colorado Springs. They aren't as reliable as the Khypermedia's.

Peace out,

BaseJase
Illynoise

I just had a bad batch of inkjet printable Mitsui golds that made my life miserable... I had to redo 70 CD-R for a local chorale and replace a bunch of other random projects. What a pain in the arse! They failed on 4 different burners on 2 different machines. I used to love and trust them now I'm EXTREMELY leery. I found the Maxell inkjet printables (silver) from Office Despot to work fine. Anyone have a favorite inkjet printable that they're having good results with?

Also does anyone know of a Mac utility that can check BLER rates?

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by Earwitness

Oh and is there any real strong argument for bounce to disk multiple mono, or bounce to disk stereo interleaved as to take to the mastering guy? He said he can open both. What is the difference to the stereo image between the two?
thanks
sam

If there is ANY difference between a stereo interleaved file and dual mono (seperate L & R) files made from the same mix - then the software making them is BROKEN!! Luckily I don't know of any current DAW software that is defective in this way.

A handy dandy freeware utility for batch creating stereo intereleaved wav files from dual mono .L & .R files that works very well is at http://www.railjonrogut.com/interleaver.zip

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by Earwitness

I'm taking 9 songs to my mastering guy tonite. I did a btd to the desktop, .WAV 24bit and then I burned them all from my Mac 24bit multiple mono saved in a file to a CD (sony CD-R), (they just fit) and I burned them at 4X speed. Now since its not 16/44.1 playable audio, would there be any noticable difference if I burned the CD at 1X?
thanks,
sam

For burning DATA as long as a data verification check done after the burn shows that there are no errors on the disc - then I think it's extremely safe to burn at the fastest speeds your burner allows without creating a buffer under run that can not be corrected for by your burn app (good ones, such as Nero, will give you alerts regarding this & also allow you to run a complete test to verify the integrity of the data on the disc).

For burning AUDIO - the vast majority of current burners & media are optimized for their middle speeds - NOT their lowest ones! i.e. - contrary to intuition or previous "common knowledge" - I've found that burning at 4x on my Plextor Premiums would often result in higher BLER. I usually burn at 16x to TY or Mitsui silver media and have found excelletn results with this. Best thing to do is to test your particular software/media/burner results at various speeds using a tester such as Plextools (comes bundled with Plextor Premium drives), Eclipse - http://www.eclipsedata.com Stagetech - http://www.stagetech.se/ - or Clover - http://www.cloversystems.com - to determine what works best for your particular system - and to verify that any audio master disc you create will not get rejected by the replication plant.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Oldone]

Well, as long as I have the experts in one place I have a few questions.

- Plextor drives now come with Nero. Do you find the Plextor software better?

- I have a Mad Dog CD-DVD burner now. I tried burning some CD-Rs for reference on my car stereo, an older unit ,which plays all of my store bought CDs fine. I used Nero to burn both TDK Music CD-Rs and Maxell CR-R Pro disks. In the case of the TDK disks the first 4 tracks on multiple copies play fine however consistently at track 5 the car stereo locks and shuts down. I can force tracks beyond this point but they are very distorted and then lock things up.

With the Maxells the same thing but starting with track 1 there is distortion then lock up.

I then burned in Windows media player to see if Nero was the problem and things were simliar except the distortion and lock up point shifted to other tracks.

A lot of variables here so do you think its the drive, software or disks? By the way, all of the copies above show no verification errors and they work in all of the computers and two home stereos just fine (new players).

Any thoughts on getting a burn that works on older car stereos like manufactured disks?

(Burned at 8x, slowest rate in the software. )

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by Oldone

Any thoughts on getting a burn that works on older car stereos like manufactured disks?

Some older units (not just car stereos but early home & portable systems too) simply are not compatible with CD-R's - period - with nothing to do about it but replace it with a newer unit. Of course - there are also some older systems that are just simply "finicky" in this regard - in which case you might want to see if you can get CD-R's to play in this car's current stereo that were burned by friends or other studios to see if the problem is specific to your current burner. But I have a feeling your best solution is just to get a new CD player for your car.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Oldone]

Thanks Cellotron. I picked up a Plextor drive today and bought their XL software. Burned a TDK and no go. In fact the results were not as good as the Mad Dog with Nero.

I guess another car stereo is my only option.

[MASSIVE Master]

Just checking - You're burning a RedBook compliant, DAO, 150 frame pre-gap, etc., etc., and it's still giving you trouble?

I've seen that kind of trouble before, but it was almost always something goofy like it was written in TAO...

[Oldone]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

Just checking - You're burning a RedBook compliant, DAO, 150 frame pre-gap, etc., etc., and it's still giving you trouble?

I've seen that kind of trouble before, but it was almost always something goofy like it was written in TAO...

Not sure about Redbook, Nero just has the Audio CD choice button. It is DAO but 150 frame pre-gap? There is no selection for this so I assume the default is providing this.

Just an update, I did get better results with Nero (not Plextor XL) and the TDK disks. I can play up to track 6 before distortion and skipping starts. This was at 8x burn. Above this burn speed the results were worse.


Checking for frame pre-gap settings now and thanks.

(Update - Found the frames setting - it was set for 2 seconds which is the same as 150 frames. I can only assume that beyond the better burner, I need better disks but I really like the idea of a new car stereo.)

[Cellotron]

Originally Posted by Oldone

Not sure about Redbook, Nero just has the Audio CD choice button. It is DAO but 150 frame pre-gap?

There are 75 CD frames per second - so 150 frames = 2 seconds - which is the minimal requirement for the pre-gap pause to be. In other words - yes - this is correct - you don't need to change this.

Best regards,
Steve Berson

[Andy Krehm]

Originally Posted by Greg Heimbecker

I just had a bad batch of inkjet printable Mitsui golds that made my life miserable... I had to redo 70 CD-R for a local chorale and replace a bunch of other random projects. What a pain in the arse! They failed on 4 different burners on 2 different machines. I used to love and trust them now I'm EXTREMELY leery. I found the Maxell inkjet printables (silver) from Office Despot to work fine. Anyone have a favorite inkjet printable that they're having good results with?

I also had several bad batches of Mitsui discs, formerly very reliable. Mine were ink jet printable.

I have switched to Taiyo Yuden's and haven't had a problem since. I think I'm on my 5th spindle of 100.

Andy,

Silverbirch Productions.

[Jerry Tubb]

Originally Posted by MASSIVE Master

BTW... If anyone is interested, the best was at 8X on a Plextor Plexwriter using (standard CD-R) Tayio Yuden silver stock. Although Maxell's GOLD MUSIC CD-R had an incredibly low rate - It was insane - Can't remember it, but it was around 0.1/3/0 - Had to check it twice.

-Exactly- my experience as well John... 8x burns on Plextor 716 with Maxell Music Pro (which are TY) yeilds super low error rates... however not every disc on a 25 pc spindle is that good.

Also agree with Bob O... faster burns are better for Data.

cheers